Janice Fine contributes to a forum on "After Trump." She argues that many people care about inequality, but not all like unions. Some think unions are too conflictual, but Fine argues this is necessary to win the kinds of demands we need to win.

High-Speed Rail Route to L.A. Coming Into View

Get a load of early plans for the bullet train’s SoCal ride

You wouldn’t know it by the scant media coverage, but construction of the state’s bullet train is in full swing around Fresno and the Central Valley. The California High-Speed Rail Authority will likely next build out the northern stretch—to Silicon Valley and San Francisco—but its narrowing in on how to get to Los Angeles and what that route will look like.

The board recently announced a redesign to the future stations, including the stop that will be built at our very own Union Station. Trains will be shorter than anticipated and platforms will be proportionately reduced, from 1,410 feet to 800 feet. The shorter trains—which will consist of about 10 train cars hitched together, instead of the previously proposed 20—will also mean shorter “refuge” tracks that are required for emergencies. With the refuge tracks will be cut by 600 feet, meaning the stations will be about 1,200 feet shorter than before.

The design change has both pluses and negatives. Financially, smaller stations mean cheaper stations and less real estate purchasing. A negative could be packed platforms should the train exceed ridership expectations when it opens in the next decade.

How this will affect Union Station is still unclear. While Metro has released plenty of information on their ambitious plans to redesign the rail hub and its surrounding parcels with a mix of developments, retail, and pedestrian-friendly amenities, the agency’s been coy about the bullet train stop. Metro is likely waiting for more guidance from the CHSRA, but a video on the Union Station Master Plan shows the platform going in on the east end of the station, close to Metro’s headquarters.

The Taylor Yard complications and the issue of how to enter Union Station are minor compared to getting the trains through the San Gabriel Mountains, where 24 miles of tunnels may need to be dug. Sounds like an impossible feat, but remember how we built a trans-continental railroad and a freeway system stretching through 50 states? This is nothing.

Judge says decision will come soon, as the value of Hanjin’s ships could deteriorate
September 28, 2016 5:13 A.M. ET

To constrain rising shipping costs, the online giant is building its own delivery operation, setting up a clash with its shipping partners
By Greg Bensinger and Laura Stevens - September 27, 2016 1:45 P.M. ET

Sansone, former head of St. Louis Teamsters, diesy - Associated Press
Sunday, August 21, 2016

ST. LOUIS (AP) - A former longtime head of St. Louis’ Teamsters union during the 1980s has died.

Robert “Bobby” Sansone’s family tells the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/2bHfO66 ) that Sansone died Friday of respiratory failure. He was 78.

Sansone served for a dozen years as president of the Teamsters’ Joint Council 13, which represented St. Louis’ 35,000 members. He retired in 1998.

Sansone got a Teamsters union card at 16 to drive a dump truck at a St. Louis concrete plant.

Sansone lost a bid in 1991 for vice president of the 1.4-million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Two years later, Sansone was banned from the organization for failing to look into an aide’s alleged mob ties.

Sansone’s funeral Mass will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday at St. Anselm Catholic Parish in Creve Coeur.

Mr. Trump’s decision to make Stephen K. Bannon, chairman of the Breitbart News website, his campaign’s chief executive was a defiant rejection of efforts by longtime Republican hands to wean him from the bombast and racially charged speech that helped propel him to the nomination but that now threaten his candidacy by alienating the moderate voters who typically decide the presidency.

It also formally completed a merger between the most strident elements of the conservative news media and Mr. Trump’s campaign, which was incubated and fostered in their boisterous coverage of his rise.

Mr. Bannon was appointed a day after the recently ousted Fox News chairman, Roger Ailes, emerged in an advisory role with Mr. Trump. It was not lost on Republicans in Washington that two news executives whose outlets had fueled the anti-establishment rebellion that bedeviled congressional leaders and set the stage for Mr. Trump’s nomination were now directly guiding the party’s presidential message and strategy.

Mr. Bannon’s most recent crusade was his failed attempt to oust the House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, in this month’s primary, making his new role atop the Trump campaign particularly provocative toward Republican leaders in Washington.

Party veterans responded on Wednesday with a mix of anger about the damage they saw Mr. Trump doing to their party’s reputation and with gallows humor about his apparent inability, or unwillingness, to run a credible presidential campaign in a year that once appeared promising.

For Mr. Trump, though, bringing in Mr. Bannon was the political equivalent of ordering comfort food. Only last week, Mr. Trump publicly expressed ambivalence about modifying his style. “I think I may do better the other way,” he told Time magazine. “They would like to see it be a little bit different, a little more modified. I don’t like to modify.”

Drop in interest rates that followed British vote to hurt 2016 returns
July 10, 2016

James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, explained his decision Tuesday not to recommend charges against Hillary Clinton.
CLIFF OWEN / ASSOCIATED PRESS
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT and ERIC LICHTBLAU
JULY 5, 2016
WASHINGTON — Shortly after Hillary Clinton was interviewed on Saturday by agents at the F.B.I.’s headquarters, its director, James B. Comey, heard from his deputies that Mrs. Clinton had been truthful and forthcoming in the three-and-a-half-hour meeting.

Mr. Comey, who had been regularly briefed on the progress of the yearlong investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s email account as secretary of state, had known for some time that his agents had not uncovered enough evidence to charge her or anyone else with a crime. Now, with the interview done, he told his deputies, according to F.B.I. officials, that he wanted to move forward with a plan he had been working on for months to explain the findings from such a politically contentious investigation to the public. And he did not wait to do it.

At 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Mr. Comey walked into a conference room on the first floor of the F.B.I.’s headquarters, where he stood behind a lectern for 15 minutes and laid out in clinical detail how Mrs. Clinton’s use of the account was “extremely careless.” But, he said, the bureau would recommend to the Justice Department that she not be charged with a crime because his investigators had found no clear evidence that Mrs. Clinton had intentionally broken the law.

The careful approach to publicly explaining his thinking fit a pattern for Mr. Comey, who, throughout his three decades as a law enforcement official, has refused to shy away from politically fraught issues. While he was immediately praised by some for his candor and transparency, it did not insulate him from criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, as well as some legal experts.

Republicans contended that Mr. Comey had rushed the decision to clear Mrs. Clinton before the bureau had time to digest what she had said in the interview, and that his decision came suspiciously close to Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s impromptu meeting with former President Bill Clinton only a week before. They said Mr. Comey’s own description of the F.B.I.’s findings on Tuesday was enough evidence to file criminal charges.

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“This defies logic,” said Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, the Virginia Republican who leads the House Judiciary Committee. Mr. Goodlatte said he had spoken with Mr. Comey immediately after his announcement to express his concerns. Later Tuesday, Mr. Goodlatte sent Mr. Comey a letter demanding answers to eight pointed questions about the handling of the investigation and the implication for future inquiries.

Robert Cattanach, a former Justice Department lawyer who now works in private practice in Chicago on cybersecurity and other issues, said it was puzzling for Mr. Comey not to seek criminal charges after laying out significant evidence of serious security breaches.

“This decision will not enhance the credibility of the F.B.I. or the director,” he said, given the amount of evidence the agency uncovered about mishandled, classified information.

Mrs. Clinton’s supporters and other Democrats contended that Mr. Comey had talked too much, saying it was not fair for him to have laid out the details in a case in which she will not be charged.

“He has essentially put himself in the place of judge,” Matthew Miller, a former senior official in the Obama Justice Department who supports Mrs. Clinton, said in a telephone interview. He added, “He’s clearing her, but he’s smearing her at the same time, and the department’s rules prevent that kind of thing from happening.”

“What Director Comey did today was appalling,” Mr. Miller said. He added that the F.B.I. should be laying out its investigative findings in court when prosecutors actually bring a case, not at a televised news conference where charges are not being sought.

But Thomas DiBiagio, a Washington lawyer who worked closely with Mr. Comey when both were federal prosecutors at the Justice Department in the Bush administration, said the unusual public nature of the announcement showed Mr. Comey’s willingness to “take the hit” on a controversial decision.

“This was a no-win for him,” Mr. DiBiagio said. “There’s no way he was going to please everyone on this one. Had he decided to recommend charging her, he would have been heavily criticized and scrutinized, and in the decision today, he’s clearly being heavily criticized and scrutinized, too. So he stood up there and said, ‘I’m going to take the criticism.’ That’s what an F.B.I. director does.”

Mr. Comey’s announcement also served to take the spotlight off Ms. Lynch, who was widely criticized after she met Mr. Clinton on her plane in Arizona last week and after she said on Friday that she would defer to the F.B.I. and to prosecutors about whether to bring charges.

As deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, Mr. Comey was at the center of a dramatic dispute with administration officials in 2004, when he refused to reauthorize a secret National Security Agency wiretapping program put into place after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Mr. Comey believed parts of the warrantless wiretapping program might have been illegal. That led to a showdown in a Washington hospital room, where Attorney General John Ashcroft was ill. Two of Mr. Bush’s top aides, Andrew H. Card Jr. and Alberto R. Gonzales, were trying to pressure Mr. Ashcroft to sign the order.

Mr. Comey met with Mr. Bush the next day about the episode, and he and more than a dozen other officials threatened to resign over what they saw as a usurpation of power by White House officials.

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Mr. Comey’s testimony about the episode before a Senate committee three years later was the stuff of a Hollywood film, as he described racing to the hospital in an F.B.I. car with sirens blaring to try to get to the attorney general’s room before Mr. Card and Mr. Gonzales.

In his congressional testimony, Mr. Comey described the events as “the most difficult of my professional career.”

“I was angry,” Mr. Comey told the committee. “I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me. I thought he had conducted himself in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper.”

President Obama appointed Mr. Comey in 2013 to head the F.B.I., but Mr. Comey has not shied away from clashing with the administration. Last October, Mr. Comey gave a speech in which he said that additional scrutiny and criticism of police officers after several highly publicized episodes of police brutality might have led to an increase in violent crime in some cities because officers had become less aggressive.

“I’ve been told by a senior police leader who urged his force to remember that their political leadership has no tolerance for a viral video,” Mr. Comey said in his speech, adding that many leaders and police officers to whom he had spoken said they were afraid to address the issue publicly.

The speech angered senior White House officials, who contended that Mr. Comey had no evidence to back up his claims and that he was undermining their efforts to overhaul the criminal justice system. Just days after the speech, Mr. Comey met with Mr. Obama in the Oval Office to discuss their views, but he has continued to voice his opinion on the topic — even as White House officials have maintained there is little evidence to support his views.

On Sunday, September 11, 2016 members from Kraft-Heinz plant in Fullerton overwhelmingly voted to ratify their new three (3) year Agreement which included minor concessions and significant improvements to the H&W with no employee contribution for the first year and minor employee contribution rate for each of the following years. The Agreement also includes yearly wage increases of thirty-five (0.35) cents on Jan. 1st of each year of the contract. Additionally, workers secured a pay-out of the Productivity Bonus of three thousand ($3,000) dollars which will be paid out thirty days after ratification as well as a severance package security going forward.

Teamsters Local 952 would like to thank the following members of our negotiating team who spent 4 days at the table: Brother Victor Acosta, Sister Rosa Encizo, Brother Daniel Gonzalez, Brother George Gomez, Sister Araceli Martinez, Sister Graciela Martinez, Sister Carmelita Placentia, Sister Sofia Ramos-Hernandez and Brother Jorge Rios. They put their personal life aside to attend negotiations to insure we had the best deal possible.

Last but not least, we would like to thank our Stewards and all the Members of Teamsters Local 952 that work at Kraft-Heinz plant. It is these men and women who did the heaviest lift. Since the date of the closer was announced in the fall of 2015; they continued to work and exceed the production and surpassed the Company’s established goals. It is their hard work and dedication that convinced Kraft-Heinz to reconsider keeping the plant open and staying in Fullerton.

Later on this evening there will be on a conference call with the company to discuss the next steps and further discuss regarding the plant staying open. (9-12-2016 4PM)

BOARD OF SUPERVISORS ADOPT 1ST TIME TEAMSTER CONTRACT BETWEEN
ORANGE COUNTY OPERATIONS & SERVICE MAINTENANCE UNIT
AND TEAMSTERS LOCAL 952Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Business Representative Norma Lopez Speaking to the Board on Behalf of the Unit

Former Local 63 Secretary-Treasurer Robert “Bob” Marciel Passed Away Suddenly In Late November

PICTURE-
Robert Marciel (right) with Former JC42 President Mike Riley and ST of Local 986

Robert Marciel was appointed International Brotherhood of Teamsters National Dairy Director by Jackie Presser in the 1980's.

He left employment with the Teamsters Local 63 in 1991 and served as a consultant for teamster locals and dairy employers. Marciel was instrumental in amalgamating smaller locals into 63. Although he represented employers, he never forgot where he came from.

TIM CANOVA
LAW PROFESSOR
Friend of the Teamsters Union,
Ex-Dean of Chapman University
is fighting it out for Congress in South Florida.
Tim is a Congressional candidate against former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and is South Florida's Progressive Voice.
If interested in Tim's campaign please contact timcanova.com

If also interested in debate between
Canova and Wasserman-ShultzClick here

Three Teamsters organizers were passing out union flyers in a small town in Georgia. Then the cops showed up.

We say goodbye to long time Teamster Brother Frank Lemos.
Brother Lemos was a driver for Lucky Stores for over 30 years and a Local 952 Shop Steward.

Frank P. Lemos, age 71, of Spokane Valley Washington went to be with our Lord on June 20, 2016 at 12:57 am, after losing his battle with Cancer.

Frank was Born June 17, 1944 in Los Angeles California to Pasqual “Coco” Lemos and Ann Weber Lemos. He served as a U.S. Marine from 1962 to 1967 and proudly served in Vietnam. Frank married Sharon K Kirton in 1963 and together they had three children, Sheri Lynette, Shawn Lloydell and Frankie Leonard.

For 27 years, Frank was a truck driver for Lucky Stores and also served as a Chief Shop Steward for the Teamsters Local 952. Frank joined Elks Lodge #2142, located in the city of Norwalk California and also spent a lot of his time at the Elks Orange Lodge #1475 in the city of Orange. He enjoyed many years serving as an Elk.

Frank met his current wife, Carol Sue Mcnaul Lemos in 1994. In January of 2013 Frank and Carol Sue retired in Spokane Washington to be near her two sons John Eric and Christopher Jackson along with their families.

Frank took great pride in being a grandfather to his grandchildren: David, Josh, Joey, Jake, Jonathon, Christopher, Kristin, Kaitlyn, Frankie, Dakota, Sarah, Karlee, Carissa and Carolyn. Also to his 7 Great-grandchildren who will miss him dearly.

For those of you who would like to attend, the Services will be held on July 12, 2016 at 1:00 pm at the Riveside National Cementary 22495 Van Buren Blvd Riverside, CA 92518

Anaheim Convention Center Negotiation Team Member
Michelle Grayson Anderson, Jordan Brandman, Anaheim City Council and Business Representative Norma Lopez.

A strike at Kroger may be avoided after new negotiations between the grocer and union members.

Kroger and the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 union confirmed Wednesday morning that they reached a tentative agreement on a new employee contract. The agreement covers 5,100 Kroger associates working in 41 stores across Virginia, east Tennessee and West Virginia.

Last week, more than 1,100 union members met at the Salem Civic Center and voted overwhelmingly to reject Kroger's last contract proposal and authorize a strike if the grocer did not meet their requests for higher pay and health insurance. The union represents about 3,000 employees, both part-time and full-time, in non-salaried positions.

At that meeting, Kroger employees said they took issue with the company's offer because it included only a small pay increase and no paid sick days for store associates, and it would not provide health insurance to retirees after the end of the year. Bristol Kroger associate Todd Dolehanty, one of the 13 representatives on the union’s bargaining team, called Kroger's proposal a slap in the face.

After the vote to authorize a strike, Kroger officials made plans to meet with the union again on Monday and Tuesday, when they came to an agreement. Specific details of the new contract proposal were not released. However, a news release from Kroger said it "provides significant investment by Kroger in higher pay, affordable health care and pension support for associates."

"It's not everything we wanted, but it is an improvement," Dolehanty said.

Dawn Greenway, a clerk at a Roanoke County Kroger store who is also on the bargaining team, said in a news release from the union that Kroger's new proposal is "by far the best one."

"It included improvements in all the areas we were concerned about," she said.

The bargaining team will now bring the offer to the entire membership for a vote. That meeting will be held on June 8 at the Berglund Center in Roanoke.

Kroger, the nation's largest grocery chain and the leading grocer in southwest Virginia, has been in contract negotiations with union members for months. Employees operated under a three-year contract until April and then worked under an extended contract until May 8. On that day, Kroger offered a contract proposal that was unanimously rejected by the union's bargaining team before it was brought to the membership last week. Employees are still operating on an extended contract until June 4.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont prevailed over Hillary Clinton on Tuesday in the Oregon primary, according to The Associated Press, while Mrs. Clinton claimed victory in a tight race in Kentucky, the day’s other contest.

Mrs. Clinton raced around Kentucky in the two days before the primary, hoping to fend off Mr. Sanders in a state that she won easily in 2008. In unofficial results late Tuesday night, Mrs. Clinton edged Mr. Sanders by about 1,900 votes, or less than half a percentage point, with all counties reporting. The Associated Press had not declared a winner by midnight.

The close result meant that she and Mr. Sanders would effectively split the state’s delegates. Nonetheless, winning Kentucky would give her a symbolic triumph that could blunt the effect of her loss in Oregon as she turns her attention to Donald J. Trump, her likely general election opponent.

With a lead in delegates that is almost impossible for Mr. Sanders to overcome, Mrs. Clinton is moving closer each week to claiming the Democratic nomination. But her march has been encumbered by Mr. Sanders’s success in recent contests, including victories in Indiana’s primary on May 3 and West Virginia’s last week.

His continued strength has put a spotlight on a lack of unity in the Democratic Party.

With Mr. Sanders pressing on with his campaign and Mr. Trump now the presumptive Republican nominee, Mrs. Clinton has been campaigning against two opponents at once.

Speaking on Tuesday night at a rally in Carson, Calif., Mr. Sanders said: “There are a lot of people out there, many of the pundits and politicians, they say, ‘Bernie Sanders should drop out. The people of California should not have the right to determine who the next president will be.’ ”

“Well, let me be as clear as I can be,” he continued, “We are in till the last ballot is cast.”

Loretta Sanchez for U.S. Senate

California in November will elect a new U.S. senator for the first time in 24 years. To replace four-term Sen. Barbara Boxer, who decided not to seek re-election, we endorse Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Orange, because she has demonstrated incredible judgment on the most crucial issues of our generation, taking tough stands in the face of tremendous opposition.

When thinking deeply about the most consequential policy decisions made by Congress in the past two decades, the vote to invade Iraq in 2003 should be at the top of the list. The loss of life, the standing of the United States globally, the drain on economic resources, the national debt and the deeper political divisions in our country arguably flow from that congressional authorization of war.

Hindsight has led many members of Congress who voted for the war to regret their actions. But only a minority of members of Congress can say that they voted no at the time. Rep. Sanchez is one of the few that stood up against public opinion and political pressure to vote her conscience.

“Too many of my colleagues have rushed to use the military for every single thing,” she told us. “The military is the last thing I want to do,” she added, and should be utilized only after diplomacy and all other options had been exhausted.

When pressed about when it is appropriate to send American citizens to war, the congresswoman, whose husband was in the military and whose son is currently serving, asserted that she would picture what she would say to the mother of a dead soldier to determine if military conflict was worth the cost. Her discernment on military matters and experience as a member of both the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees alone eminently qualifies her to represent California in the Senate.

Aside from the Iraq War vote, Rep. Sanchez has also shown independence of thought when voting to oppose the USA PATRIOT Act, a law that has led to the expansion of executive power and unprecedented government surveillance of Americans’ private data and communications. She also voted against the $700 billion bank bailout in 2008 when it was politically unpopular for legislators of either party to do so.

This is not to say that Rep. Sanchez has a perfect voting record, but, rather, that when she is faced with the biggest and most complex decisions, she typically makes the correct choice. It is those big issues such as war and the surveillance of millions of Americans that have a greater impact on citizens’ lives than perhaps anything else Congress has done. For these reasons, Rep. Sanchez is the right choice for the United States Senate.

Donald J. Trump claimed victories on Super Tuesday in seven states, from Vermont to Arkansas, and his strongest support came from places like Fall River, Mass., and Buchanan County, Va.
They have little in common but economic hardship, a sense of longing for the better times they once had and an unshakable belief that a President Trump might be the answer to their troubles. Here is a closer look at a few of the places where Mr. Trump won big.

Follow results as the Hawkeye State casts the first ballots of the 2016 presidential campaign to select a Democratic and Republican nominee. Find out who wins on our interactive map, which updates live as voting takes place
February 1, 2016

Hundreds of public employees and union supporters gathered in front of the Supreme Court today, united with one voice, to speak out against this attack.

Now is the time to mobilize all public sectors business agents, elected officers, stewards and interested members to approach all non-members, so we can strengthen the union, expand our membership base, and maintain sufficient resources to organize, negotiate for, and effectively represent all Teamsters. Attached is the Teamsters Power Building Program if you have not already received it in the mail. The materials included in this packet should assist local unions in conducting training sessions to educate and train business agents, shop stewards and interested members.

We will soon be holding informational/ contract proposal meetings at Teamsters Local 952's Union hall. We will also be distributing contract bargaining surveys. Please keep an eye on our website (teamsters952.org) and your bulletin boards for informational contract proposal meeting dates and times. We are working with the County in transitioning trustees on to your enhanced benefits trust fund. We look forward to working with you and your fellow employees in order to get a good contract that is more in line with the value of service that you provide to the County. The service that you provide is a critical function for the community and your Employer.

Thank you for your support of the Teamsters Union. If you have any questions please feel free to contact your Business Representative Norma Lopez at 714-740-6246 and/or Organizer Bobby Block at 951-310-9540.

We would like to thank everyone that volunteered their work in this campaign as well as the Orange County employees that supported this election. For more information contact Business Representative Norma Lopez at (714) 740-6246 and/or Bobby Block at (951) 310-9540.

Con-way Freight, Inc. violated the rights of workers who were trying to form their union with the Teamsters and must re-hire two workers it unlawfully fired during the organizing campaign, among other remedies, an administrative law judge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled.

“By instructing employees not to wear union insignia, threatening employees for supporting the Union, filing criminal charges against an employee, suspending employees, and terminating employees because they supported the Union, the Respondent has engaged in unfair labor practices…,” Administrative Judge Eleanor Laws wrote in her decision.

The workers at Con-way’s Los Angeles terminal were trying to join Local 63. The company must cease its illegal activities, reinstate the two fired workers and pay them back wages and benefits, and take other steps. To Read the Decision, Click Here.